Mind My Brains, Darling! Season 1

Goodnight Princess Omnibus (Acts 1-3)

Interview with Felicia Day

I’ve been on YouTube for a long time. Way before EvilWorldofHiglet or HigletFilms came along I was on there, and I’ve always quite liked the site. Sure – it’s chaotic, hard to navigate and reading comments will have you questioning your will to live – but I have always appreciated the fact that anyone, ANYONE, can upload their work there. When we were thinking about distribution options for ‘Mind My Brains, Darling!‘ we knew we had to be on YouTube, but chose Blip as a distributor because it seemed to make sense at the time (how that worked out is another post entirely).

In past I’ve had some brushes with ads being disabled on content on the EvilWorldofHiglet channel. Mostly this was due to bogus copyright claims, and this is a big problem on YouTube (as described here on Wired.com). However, I did manage to prove copyright and get the content back. Now there is a new type of problem. YouTube has expanded its Partnership program so that many more people can apply to have ads run against their content. That’s a great idea. BUT, (you knew there would be a BUT, didn’t you?) they are now clamping down and disallowing content even if there is no copyright infringement claims against your work.

Are you now, or have you ever been…

How does that work? Well, when you upload a video to YouTube you can choose to monetise the video if you have been accepted on the program. When I started uploading the ‘Behind The Scenes’ videos for MMBD, I thought I would try it out. I ticked the relevant boxes describing the content and certified that I owned all the rights to the material. The first two videos were accepted fine, and they are still monetised. However, shortly after uploading ‘Why We Developed BodyLineFilming Technique‘ on April 1st 2012 we had an automated email from YouTube stating:

“Dear higletfilms,

Thanks for submitting your videos for monetization. We have disabled monetization on the following videos because we were not able to verify that you have the appropriate commercial use rights for all included content:

If you can provide documentation that you have the necessary commercial use rights for all elements in your video, please take a moment to learn how to claim rights to a video, and then submit documentation using the links above.

Please note that we may only serve ads on advertiser-friendly content. YouTube reserves the right to make the final decision whether to monetize a video, and may disable monetization for users who repeatedly submit ineligible videos. If you currently have videos pending review, you may choose to opt them out of monetization by visiting http://www.youtube.com/my_videos.

Thanks,

The YouTube Team

I followed the instructions on how to submit a claim and sent this back to them within an hour:

“This video is a behind-the-scenes look at why we chose to film our
webseries, ‘Mind My Brains, Darling!’ in BodyLine, a filming technique we
have perfected over 3 years.

All the video, stills and music were created for the webseries and we have
full and exclusive rights to all materials – video, sound, music, graphics
and everything else. See our websites at http://higletfilms.com and

http://mindmybrains.com.

If you require more proof please indicate how this might be done and what,
in particular, caused you to disable monetisation on this video so we might
provide you with the materials you need.

We are hopeful that we will receive a prompt response to this since we have
replied within 30 minutes of receiving notification, even though it is 1:38
AM.

Regards,

Mary Higgins”

Then, we waited, bemused that our Video Manager still showed this:

Congratulations! We need that in triplicate, and in a super-secret format…

And then this morning I received not one, but two emails from YouTube Partner Support. Lucky me! Only, not really.

Email 1:

“…Hi,

We haven’t been able to confirm that you have the necessary rights to commercially use all the video material and music from the information you’ve given us, so we ask that you provide written documentation substantiating your claim.

YouTube is not in a position to offer legal advice or to counsel you in any way. However, we have listed some elements below which we have seen in contracts to give you a sense of the types of documents we receive.

-explicit permission to use the rights holder’s content commercially (example: “I, rights holder’s name, give your name or channel’s name, the right to use my original content commercially.”)

-electronic signature with date (this can be as simple as the rights holder writing out full name at the bottom of the document)

Please be sure to pay attention to any limitations and/or conditions specified by the rights holder concerning your use of the content.

Once you have the appropriate contract, please email it to us as an attachment.

Thanks for submitting your video for monetization. We need you to provide documentation proving you own the necessary commercial use rights to all sound recordings, musical compositions, performances, video material.

Simply stating that you own the rights to the content may not be sufficient. You must be as specific as possible whenever asked to make a claim on a video.

– If you created your own music, please provide the following information: Artist, Song, Music Composer/Lyricist/Publisher, Music Label (if any)/your relationship with Music Label, Rights Owner’s Name and Contact Information, Your Name (first/last).

– If you created original music or visuals from software, please provide the name of the software and a link to its license terms.

– If you used stock music or visuals from software, please provide the name of the software and a link to its license terms.

– If you used royalty-free music, please provide the following information: Name of the track, Artist of the track, Direct URL of the track, Link to the license terms.

I thought that the information I sent to them would be enough, but apparently not. So now I need to find a way to word a response that will satisfy them that I have all the rights to all the content. Perhaps I will just send them this:

Why this is important

Granted, our viewing figures on YouTube are tiny, and we are not suffering a loss of income at the moment. BUT THAT IS NOT THE POINT. ANY MINUTE NOW our videos could be picked up, linked to or tweeted by a famous person, and then we would lose the potential to earn revenue. And we are not the only people this is happening to. Many YouTube users, including members of the International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV), have been having similar problems. If smaller creators are ever going to have a chance of earning any sort of money via their content, these sorts of issues have to be addressed.

YouTube needs to find a way to protect themselves from copyright claims that does not mean that content creators have to jump through ridiculous hoops to prove their claims. YouTube does give you examples of phrasings that might pass their automated tests, but obviously it doesn’t always work, and it is frustrating to be caught in this type of Brazil-type bureaucratic nightmare. Demotivating, indeed.

What can be done?

Firstly I would recommend that anyone hoping to monetise their videos makes a full and frank disclosure when they upload. And if your ads are disabled make sure you follow all the instructions. And then get really good at waiting.

I would like some more advice and guidance, too. If you have had videos removed or ads disabled, how did you deal with it? Would you like to see bodies such as the IAWTV put pressure on YouTube? Do you have any ideas how the situation could be resolved?

I would love to hear from you in the comments, on Twitter or Google+ so we can see how widespread the problem is.

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28 Comments

Four years ago YouTube repeatedly pulled episodes of Political Lunch down because of news footage we included, though everything we ever used was clearly fair use. Pre-emptively pulling content that is not obviously illegal is a very delicate process, and YouTube needs to get much better at being selective with this.

In the meantime, either jump through ridiculous hoops, or find another outlet. Depending on the content, you may not lose much by going elsewhere.

Excellent article because it’s based on learning. I have heard these type of stories from many video creators, and it’s sad really. YouTube need to do a better job in this area because it’s costing them and their partners money, and making their partners mad and leaving them frustrated. I guess all one can do for now is follow the YouTube protocol and hope it loosens up a bit in the future with pressure from org’s like IAWTV and big partners who also suffer the same fate you do.

I think that is the problem YouTube will face. People *will* go elsewhere if this continues. Fact is, you can be on YouTube and everywhere else, too, so when there is any sort of contender to YouTube’s crown creators will simply go elsewhere. We only need to look back at recent history at other platforms like MySpace to know that things can change pretty quickly.

I heard that Youtube made everything automatic because of the sheer volume they have to process, and I can understand that. But unless they start to add human oversight into the process this won’t be resolved. And I really hope that the IAWTV and Channel Partners do lobby to get things changed, because they have much more chance of making YouTube listen and take action.

I feel your pain. All of the music (with just a couple of duly attributed exceptions) on my YouTube channel is created, recorded, copyrighted, and owned by me. My music is distributed by CD Baby and iTunes and many other entities. Most of my videos have public-domain images and/or film footage in them, so I’ve never bothered to try to monetize them, but a couple of them have original video–owned by me–which accompanies the soundtrack. I’ve tried to monetize them and I’ve gotten the same message from YouTube: They can’t verify my ownership, so it’s up to me to jump through all their mystifying hoops in order to (possibly) meet all their requirements. I figured it wasn’t worth my time and energy, so I gave up, and after reading what you went through, I’m certain I made the right choice. Good article, though. Well written and entertaining. Cheers.

This is the problem creators face – you try to jump through the hoops or give up. There doesn’t seem to be an alternative to YouTube at the moment, so we’re stuck. Since I wrote this I’ve come up against it several more times, and I might have to write another piece about that. When we uploaded our entry for Celebrate The Web 6 it was immediately flagged, even though the music we had used was via Audiosocket, as per the arrangement CTW6 negotiated for the competition. So we had to get a certificate from audiosocket to prove they had given us the rights. Kontor music did eventually drop the dispute, but it took a month. Imagine if our video had gone viral, how much revenue would have been lost in that time.

Just yesterday I uploaded a video where I had used 2 loops from Garageband for the music, and it was again immediately flagged. I checked out the song it says matches our soundtrack, and they have used one of the Garageband loops in the composition. So what happens in that case? Do they have a case, or not? I have no idea.

I’ve disputed the claim with the names of the loops we used and I’ll see what happens. I had given up on the video I mentioned in this post, but maybe I should pursue it because YouTube is not getting the message about this at all.

1) YouTube is dealing with an avalanche of material, much or most of it pirated, unauthorized, “shared,” stolen. YouTube simply cannot discern and separate legitimate intellectual-property-owners from all the pirates, third-party uploaders and honest fair-users. The system is swamped. YouTube’s answer seems to be to judge all property owners and creators as guilty until proven innocent. It’s a confession that they have lost control of their product. Not that their commitment to the protection of artists’ and creators’ rights is not suspect, in my mind. Without all the pirated, unauthorized material that has made it a media colossus, YouTube would be just another obscure video site.

2) A whole generation of “users” has grown up believing that, if one can obtain and distribute music or movies or any intellectual property without paying for it, and without the consent of the property owner, it’s fair game. They attempt to justify these ethical equivocations by the use of semantics and moral relativism, calling their theft “sharing.” Because the property may be digitally encoded, the thieves believe that, hey, if you can’t see it or hold it in your hand, it cannot be real property! This disintegration of ethical standards in our culture should be troubling not only to the creators amongst us but to all individuals who recognize that, without property rights, there can be no rights at all.

Just had this happen to me just a vacation video no biggie but never thought hmm how do you prove you shot a video. I don’t know why they don’t take the approach of don’t remove until you receive a complaint i suppose it must be something they agreed to in order to work more closely with the large rights holders like the RIAA members.

I totally understand and approve of upholding the rights of copyright holders but I agree with you. I think it has swung too far in the other direction when small-scale users are having videos marked as soon as they are uploaded and have to prove that the material is theirs. Or is the problem so bad that YouTube is flagging all new videos? I can’t imagine how they could cope with that volume. Maybe it is just a proportion and that’s how they prove they are taking copyright theft seriously. Whatever, it is annoying and time-consuming to jump through the hoops. There has to be a better way to do this.

This is infuriating. Absolutely infuriating. First of all they asked you what software you used? YOU ALREADY TOLD THEM!!! WTF??? I freaking hate the people who run youtube. Love the site, love the idea, the more I learn about the people who run it the more they seem like low life pieces of crap…. this is unacceptable.

I just came across this blog by chance. Looking at what You Tube are sending out, they seem to be want written confirmation from you that they could rely on to defend a copyright infringement action or to seek an indemnity for damages and costs from you in a copyright infringement action. I am a lawyer based in Ireland and the equivalent would be asking for a legal declaration stating you are the creator and remain the owner of the copyright and hitting all the points they are asking for and exhibiting the paper trail of proofs (if any). A bit like a lot of things really, their lawyers have likely advised them to get this up front, not ask questions later. They don’t even seem to be asking it to be a legally sworn document (costs about €10 to swear it over here). The way of the world really. Remember when these sites get so big they can implement their own rules. When you obtain content from third party sites, getting the chain of evidence back to copyright owner’s consent must be a nightmare.

This happened to me recently. I uploaded a video for a beauty tutorial and there wasn’t even a song there. They still asked me to provide more information. I don’t know what to tell them because it’s me on the video and the editing software I used is the Windows Live Movie Maker. It’s still under “monitoring for possible review” for a few days now. I don’t have much views but it’s a little discouraging for beginners like me. I want to upload more videos but I worry that I’ll run into the same problem again

I really should follow this story up since I’ve heard the same story over and over.

I’m sorry that this experience has put you off uploading more videos, Sharon. It would be a shame if it stopped you creating! Try not to be discouraged if you aren’t getting many views to begin with. It is really hard to attract viewers but one of the things you can do is keep uploading more videos and make contact with other YouTube users by commenting and subscribing. There are tons of resources available to help you. And if you are on Twitter there is a #webserieschat (http://webserieschat.com/) every Wednesday you could follow, and join in if you have any questions.

I think like all the on-line money makers policy they are doing… Only making interest to the people and the people making video and hopefully trying to be a partner of you tube. Because if they not said these kind od charming words, no one will try to upload videos. So they made the people as the unpaid employee. But they will make money from advertisers from our uploaded videos.. A Well known Google making this..its ashamed. One of my video also they indicated after 5000 views, its not qualify for monetization. They have wait upto 5000 views, after that You tube making this information. It means 5000 views created money for them, but they don’t want to give us. That’s what they do. So I will not try to make monetization. We can upload on indyarocks and they pays money.

Luckily, the videos that I’ve had issues with haven’t been the ones that have gotten us our most views, but it’s still frustrating. My channel has mainly Beyblade and gaming news stuff that my son and I do. We decided to make a Beyblade stadium out of lego and decided to put it to music that I wrote and recorded myself independently and sold on my own almost 20 years ago. In the video’s description https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4a_51E9E7A” I wrote: “The video is set to “Confusion-Lead” by the Wingy Thingies. I own the all copyrights to this song since I wrote it, recorded it, played all of the instruments and sang it. It has been registered through SOCAN since 1994.” When I got a message from youtube taking putting it under review, I even went further explaining how I owned all of the content and even offered to sell them a copy of one of the tapes that I still had kicking around. I got no reply. About a year and a half ago I had the same issue with YT questioning a paper bag puppet show my son and I created called “Starving Nation” for a different channel. I wrote back that not only was everything written by me but our theme music was created by me and it was also registered through SOCAN. That one is still under review. I understand that both channels are rather small potatoes but there’s got to be a faster or better process.

Hi there. I found this article because I’m trying to help my friend who has had the same problem with her YouTube videos as you guys. YouTube is now questioning her images/video can you believe? It’s just a fashion video, outfit type of video where she is the only person who appears on the shot and they’re asking her to prove she owns the images after she uploaded almost 20 videos doing the same thing, outrageous really! Do you happen to have any news/updates regarding your videos?? Please post back and let us know. Thanks much!!!

I am so very glad and relieved that this was not something unique to us.

We have running on youtube trailers and teaser portions of a feature documentary that I made and own every jot and tiddle in it. Music is licensed perpetually. I filmed everything. Historical footage is all public domain.

I/we are professional media producers and are “walking intellectual rights manuals” so to say … that is our turf.

The clips and trailers have been up for 2 years. MANY thousands of views. Lots of likes and great comments.

We were set up as partners. We are in all good standing.

I am a real stickler about intellectual rights. I do not venture into “fair use” at all as I consider it a can of worms.

If I am not 100% sure of material – I don’t use it. Believe me – I pride myself on being extremely sure when it comes to copyrights and intellectual property.

We ALWAYS properly license music when needed – we have good relationships with composers basically all over the world.

We have filled out proper forms and provide copies of licenses for music and materials when we have DVD manufactured. NEVER a problem. Of course never a problem because we do everything correctly.

So we decided to monetize the youtube account.

Why not? If some guy can do it calling himself f*t*ssieb*st*rd posting rants while he smokes, drinks beer and drops an f bomb every other line can then also post videos showing the large cheques he gets from youtube – how much better can a professional fit in with “advertiser friendly content that is appropriate for all ages” as youtube asks for ?

We were very enthusiastic about the possibilities. We decided to later put the entire film up with other projects and run ads during chapter breaks. A lot of potential income for us and youtube.

It was a no-brainer we thought !

BUT –

We went ahead and set the clips to run ads …

Almost immediately our account was disabled for monetizing …

We got an email a while later saying that maybe we disabled the adsense.

Adsense STILL shows we have no violations.

Then at 430am we received an email saying we need to provide *more* information of the ownership for the content.

Fine – we can do that no problem.

!!! But – the info page we were sent to says there will be a red exclamation mark next to the videos in question.

THERE IS NO red exclamation mark !!!!!

According to the email we received – the only way to provide the info on ownership from us is to click on the red ! mark but they do not exist !!!

So it looks as if we have absolutely no way to communicate with them.

We were completely dumbfounded, frustrated and a bit hurt that our integrity would be questioned without recourse.

In the meanwhile – the videos are still there –

And we have total good standing and no bad marks ever – as it should be.

We were at a total loss of why or how.

The youtube information also states that they “may” review it even if we could have the red ! marks to get the info to youtube …

Then the information said then it would take 6 months to be reinstated.

Youtube/google LOVE to use the word “may” a lot …

And the forum there seems to only comprise of other users with problems just complaining and then other users (moderators?) giving useless information.

The problem is, we have great content that fits well with what they want – and we adhere and understand intellectual rights …

Advertisers will love their ads running on our content. Everyone will win.

The viewers win – the advertisers win – we win …

We just wanted to be able to set things right.

However, they seem to not care for us to do so. Everything seems to say “go away – we really don’t care”.

SO –

I thank you for putting up your story. We also found references elsewhere.

I realize now what youtube REALLY is.

For them to allow us to run trailers and clips giving us plugs and they basically get nothing for it – and we wanted to participate in running ads and they would get something out of it – yet they squashed our efforts right out of the gate is beyond our logic.

It has made us look to other avenues – and there are many, much better opportunities out there.

I really should thank them for being – for a lack of a better term – cruel to us.

Glad to not have devoted a lot of effort and time to only later realize we were casting pearls before swine.

*whew* … I feel a lot better now – thanks for the vent and your info !!!

Since your friend has invested so much time creating the videos I would advise her to keep the case alive and ask YouTube what information they need specifically. If she has a website she can link to, or a Flickr, tumblr or something else that can verify the stuff is hers, that might help.

You might want to consider whether Vimeo or another video site might be a better fit for you. If you are on Google+ you might want to ask other filmmakers or doc makers what they do – if nothing else it will connect you to other ppl.

Hi
I upload a movie in my youtube channel i got more than 7 lakh views, but now youtube asking to more information for that how can i produce that. but some of other person has also uploaded the same movie but he has no problem in that video. and i know he doesn’t get the copyrights to upload it, how it is possiable. please help me i tried lot a things but it didn’t work. so please help me to avoid or how to produce this proof…………

Wow, looking at the other comments and reading your blog, I just realized that this problem could get worse…I have been on Youtube for 3 years, and so far my videos were all monetized (except for some that I acknowledged had other content, and some that I had to dispute). It was all going well until just 1 week ago, TWO videos I uploaded received the exclamation mark! I make Green Screen Lego Videos, and they accuse me of copying these, but if you search for any Lego Green Screen Effects, you will find almost no Green Screen Lego videos except for mine! And even though there were a handful others, my videos were nothing similar to them! Then as soon as I got my first two problems, there came another one…and another one…THEN another one. I began to worry. I submitted all the proof I needed for them to “review”, and so far, I have not gotten any replies. The videos are now “under review” or “monitoring for possible review”. I hope this problem is resolved, but knowing how youtube is changing, I have my doubts…

This is so odd, my channel consists of gaming videos. The original video I put up had a Metallica song I love. I wasn’t really thinking when I chose it but published it. Metallica being the one who really started all of this copyright/piracy issues I thought I would get a hit. No hit they just added a iTunes buy now icon on the about page. Now when I created my own videos and searched for royalty free music, NOW my videos are disabled to monetize. I find it odd that YouTube doesn’t mind me using metallica’s music (with them fully knowing) yet all my other content is either my own or royalty free and can’t be monetized. Use copyrighted stuff, ok that’s fine we just add some buy now button for that product. Use royalty free stuff, I’m sorry, we can’t prove it’s yours. I’m sorry but it seems a little backwards to me. Copyright material, OK. You’re own material, 3..2..1.. FIGHT!

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